Bad bot traffic up 50 percent as fraudsters target Black Friday

New research from Kasada shows a 50 percent jump in bad bot activity during Black Friday week, with bot operators using customized open-source development tools, headless browsers, and new Solver Services to conduct their attacks at scale.

The report also shows a six times spike in automated gift card lookups this holiday shopping season, a key indicator that fraudsters are using bots to identify and steal gift card balances.

"Retailers have to deal with bot attacks every day, but the increased activity we've seen during the holiday shopping season truly highlights just how extreme the problem is," says Sam Crowther, CEO and founder of Kasada. "As they say, follow the money. If there is an opportunity for profit, bots will be there, looking for every way possible to exploit a retailer's business. It is critically important for retailers to employ solutions that can adapt quickly to the increasing sophistication of modern bots."

Large numbers of fake user accounts are being created too. There was a threefold increase the week before Black Friday and a 40 percent increase from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. Fraudsters generally create fake accounts in the run-up to Black Friday so they have well-established aged accounts that blend in with legitimate customer accounts. This increase reflects bot-driven efforts to obtain and abuse as many promotions as possible.

Kasada also notes a surge in so called 'Freebie Bots', which scan hundreds of retailer sites for mispriced items and purchase them in mass quantities. Items purchased can then be resold at a profit.

Cybercriminals aren't the only ones using bots though. In the run up to Black Friday the report notes a 43 percent increase in scraping bots which capture real-time data used by competitors to undercut pricing

The full report is available on the Kasada site.

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